Starkey town board 6/7/12

    Meeting:  The Starkey town board met for one hour and five minutes, on Thursday, June 7.
    Attendance:  Tim Gibson was the only board member absent.  There were four members of the public in the audience.
    Action:  The board adopted unified assessment regulations.  Assessor Tony DeStephen explained he already uses these assessment standards and that otherwise, the town would be open to lawsuits.  He added the county wants all municipalities in Yates to be uniform and up-to-date with property assessments.  He said with the exception of Jerusalem all towns are current.
    Discussion without action:  The board discussed the planning board rewriting the comprehensive plan.  Planning chairperson Bob Schiesser said they have created a subcommittee to focus on hydrofracking.  He added he wants to hold informative meetings about fracking before surveying the residents on their opinions.  He explained the town is working off of the 1993 comprehensive plan.  Concerns about fracking led the town members to rewrite the document.  Town board member George Lawson added Starkey can’t even address the final regulations, because the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation hasn’t approved them yet.  For a related story on the town’s fracking meeting scheduled for July, see Page 1.
    • Our Town RoCKS organizer Lauren Snyder spoke to the board about what the health improvement program has been doing.  She said they just mailed out the third round of surveys to 1,000 randomly selected people in the Dundee, Starkey, and Barrington area.  Snyder said the survey asks for input on the long term outcomes and effectiveness of the projects.  She explained the program needs to submit a plan by September for funding approval over the next three years.
    • DeStephen added that as the assessor of both Starkey and Barrington, he only received two tax complaints on this year’s Grievance Day.  This is out of 3,200 parcels total.
    Bids/purchases over $1,000:  Highway Superintendent Louis Seeley said he will rent a tree trimmer for $1,300 from a company out of Canandaigua for one month.
    Appointments/resignations:  Code Enforcement Officer Brian Quackenbush said the town’s zoning board of appeals is still short one member.
    Upcoming meetings:  The next town board meeting is Thursday, July 5, at 7 p.m.